


who run the world? girls.

by theoneandonlybunny



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Female Peter Parker, Gen, Hurt Peter Parker, penny needs a hug and so does the author
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:01:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27365470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoneandonlybunny/pseuds/theoneandonlybunny
Summary: Penny Parker goes from being an unknown Midtown High student to being a public figure after Beck outs her. All eyes are on her as she tries to figure out who she wants to be and what she wants out of life now that her secret is out.
Relationships: Michelle Jones/Peter Parker
Comments: 23
Kudos: 93





	1. Chapter 1

After Penny’s name gets smeared all over the Internet, Ms. Potts calls.

Penny is grateful for it, because she’s still in the suit, still on the streetlight, shell-shocked from the video. Karen lets the call through almost automatically and Ms. Potts calls Penny back to the lake house and back to safety. Rhodey is on his way to pick her up, and all Penny has to do is get somewhere and hide for the next half hour or so.

It’s easy for Penny to do that. She’s Spider-Woman. These skyscrapers are her home.

Penny is curled up on a roof when Rhodey found her. She’d texted MJ that she was sorry for ditching her before turning off her phone, so she didn’t see if MJ texted back.

“Oh good, you’re okay,” Rhodey said after he touches down near her. “How’re you holding up, kid?”

“I’ve had better days,” she said, and relaxed as he pulled her into a hug. “I’ve had worse ones, too, but it’s hard to top dying.”

“I’ll take your word on it,” Rhodey replied. “Hop on my back, Pen. You can stick to stuff even when it’s flying, right? Like a plane? Tones said something about you hijacking a plane when you were just getting started.”

“Yeah,” Penny said, Mr. Stark’s name making her heart pang painfully. She missed her mentor. “I hijacked his plane and kept a weapons dealer from making off with a bunch of aliens tech.”

Penny climbed onto his back, sticking to him the entire flight back to the lake house. Ms. Potts is there when Penny and Rhodey land, and Morgan ran out as soon as they’ve touched down. “Uncle Rhodey!” she shouted and gave him a running hug.

Ms. Potts gave Penny a hug too, and Penny tried to avoid sinking too deeply into her arms. Penny didn’t know the older woman well, only met her a few times before the first Snap, but she knew Ms. Potts was extremely competent and that, more than anything, was reassuring. If Mr. Stark’s superpower was building things, Ms. Potts’ was getting people to do what she needed them to do.

When facing a big, scary situation like this, there was no one Penny wanted on her side more.

“Have you called my aunt yet?” Penny asked, bending down to hug Morgan too. She knew Morgan even less than she knew Ms. Potts, but she knew Morgan liked her, and she tried not to be rude to cute little kids who wanted hugs. It felt like a sin.

“I did,” Ms. Potts said. “She knows you’re here and she’s glad. The police have already come by the apartment, and May said it isn’t safe for you to return.”

Penny felt sick. She must have looked it, too, because the adults ushered her and Morgan inside, and Morgan got her a juice pop.

Penny stared at it for a moment before Morgan grabbed some scissors and opened it for her.

“You’re supposed to eat it,” Morgan told her seriously. “Daddy always let me have them when I wasn’t feeling great, so now it’s your turn.”

“Oh,” Penny said, sucking on it for a second. “Thank you.”

It was grape-flavored. That was nice.

Ms. Potts smiled at the two of them and sat across from Penny. Rhodey sat in the chair next to her.

“Momo, sweetie, why don’t you go play with your dolls?” Ms. Potts asked. “We have to talk to your older sister a little bit.”

Morgan nodded and ran upstairs, which left Penny blinking a little. “Older sister?”

Ms. Potts smiled a little, and it was a sad smile. “We didn’t get a chance to talk to you much at the funeral, but Tony – Tony always wanted to bring you back. He told Morgan bedtime stories about her older sister, Spider-Woman, and he had a will drawn up before the battle. He – he assumed that the Avengers would be able to bring you back, and he made you part of the family.”

Now Penny’s head was really turning. “Made me… part of the family?” she asked, the words foreign on her tongue. “Like how?”

“He made you one of his heirs,” Ms. Potts said. “Morgan and I will be taken care of for the rest of our lives, and I’m still the CEO of Stark Industries. But he left explicit instructions for you to be taken care of as well.”

That was almost as hard to process as being told she was an older sister. Penny messed with the fabric on her gloves before she pressed her suit’s symbol, deactivating the fabric and revealing what she was wearing underneath – yoga pants and her school Decathlon shirt. “I – I don’t understand,” she said, quietly. “What does that mean?”

“It means that he cared a lot about you,” Rhodey said. “He saw something important in you. Said you were the future of the Avengers. Becoming your mentor changed him, Penny, and it changed him in big ways. Before you, Tony didn’t ever want to have kids. You… showed him that he was capable of being a parent.”

If she was confused before, Penny really felt like the rug had been yanked out from underneath her. Her stomach churned and she ran to the bathroom to lose her lunch.

Ms. Potts ran after her and helped get Penny’s hair out of her face.

“There, there,” Ms. Potts said, rubbing Penny’s back. “It’s okay. Get it all out.”

“Why me?” Penny asked, after flushing the remains of her falafels. “What – how did so much change while I was gone? He liked me enough, sure, but he never called me the future of the Avengers or anything like that. I was – I was just some kid who helped him out when he needed it and then was too annoying to go away after.”

“Oh honey,” Ms. Potts said, and grabbed a cup so Penny could rinse out her mouth. “You have never been ‘just some kid’. You have proven that so many, many times, but I saw it for myself during the Battle of the Compound. You protected that gauntlet with everything you had and then some.”

Ms. Potts pulled Penny against her and Penny started crying. She’d only had the faceoff in London a week before, and her wounds were almost done healing from that, but the entire point she didn’t want to bring Spider-Woman to Europe was because after facing off against Thanos twice in what felt like a matter of days, she needed a break.

And now she was being dumped into a new situation she barely understood.

“What happens now?” Penny asked, sniffing as she started to calm down again. “I mean, school’s out, so I’m not missing that, but what happens to my aunt? To me? Now that my identity has been leaked.”

“We’re going to figure that out tomorrow,” Ms. Potts said. “For now, you’re safe. There’s a spare room you can use as long as you need it, and we can call May when she gets out of work. We can’t put this genie back in the bottle, but you’re not alone and you have options.”

Penny nodded and washed her face a few times before drying it.

“Ms. Potts, thank you for being here,” Penny said. “If you hadn’t called, I don’t know what I would have done.”

“We’ll always be here for you, Penny,” the older woman replied. “And please. Call me Pepper.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Penny considers her options with help from Rhodey and Pepper.

When Penny calmed down a little, Pepper led her back out to the living room. Rhodey’s face was crinkled with worry when he looked up from his phone, but it smoothed out when he saw her.

“How’re you doing, Pen?” he asked, and Penny gripped the glass of water between her hands.

“I’m a little more solid now,” she said. “I guess – I just didn’t know I meant that much to him. I mean, I remember fading into the black in his arms, and then when I woke up and found him he gave me the tightest hug I’d ever gotten from him. And then we were fighting again and—”

She stopped because she didn’t need to go on anymore. Rhodey had been the one who gently pulled her away from Tony so Pepper could say goodbye.

“You changed his – our lives – so much, Penny,” Pepper said. “Tony was always grateful for that. He desperately wanted you back. His first words when he came back were “I lost the kid”. Not “we lost the battle” or “I never thought I would come home”. He was thinking of you.”

Penny put the glass down because she knew if she kept holding it she would shatter the glass, and she didn’t want to do that to Pepper.

“I know you said we could figure it out tomorrow,” Penny started, “but what are my options? I mean, I don’t think we can convince anyone that I’m not Spider-Woman now. Does that mean I’ll have to sign the Accords now?”

“That’s an answer for our lawyers to figure out,” Pepper said. “I meant it when I said some questions would have to wait. You’re right that it’ll be much, much harder to convince people you aren’t something than to tell them you are, but I want it to be your choice. If you want us to tell the media you aren’t, and to sue the website for libel and slander, we can. If you want to come out to the media, we can do that too.”

Penny didn’t like the idea of trying to convince people she wasn’t Spider-Woman. She’d spent all of eighth grade fighting a nasty rumor that Flash spread, that she was a thief who stole food because her family was so poor, and even now she knew some people still remembered the rumor and believed him.

But the entire purpose of her having a mask was to protect her family and her friends. Aunt May and MJ and Ned.

Penny thought back to the Europe trip. Even though she’d been wearing a mask, and even though she tried to leave Spider-Woman at home, Fury tracked her down and danger found her anyway and all of her friends were targeted and nearly died anyway, even though she tried her best to keep them out of it.

Would it be such a bad thing for everyone to find out? And even if they told the world that she wasn’t Spider-Woman, her classmates would put two and two together. The flakiness, the random absences, the mysterious Stark internship – the fact that she wasn’t there when the Washington Monument almost killed the team…

“I think I have to tell people,” Penny admitted. “It’s not hard to prove I’m Spider-Woman. It’s a miracle my classmates don’t already know, but… I’m worried about everyone’s safety. My aunt, my girlfriend, my best friend – what happens to them?”

This was something Rhodey and Pepper had experience in, to some degree.

“I was targeted because of my relationship to Tony,” Pepper said. “It’s not easy. But lying to them hasn’t been easy, either, has it? In my experience, just being around superheroes is dangerous but worth it. If you tell them, they then have the ability to decide for themselves whether they want to be exposed to that danger. And from what I understand, you’ve told most of the important people in your life who you are anyway.”

Rhodey nodded. “I was used against Tony because of my proximity to him, but I was also able to help support him once he got his head on straight. We fought together for years and I don’t regret it. Now, I don’t think either of us are advocating that your friends become superheroes too, but what we are saying is that there are both dangers and ways to protect them. We can help you in some regards, and they can help you in others. Telling the world doesn’t mean you’re signing their death warrants.”

Penny really relaxed when she heard that.

“Besides, from what Happy told us, your girlfriend can protect herself,” Pepper said.

“Okay, don’t say it like that,” Penny said, blushing bright red. “It’s really, really new. It only just happened last week—”

“And it’s adorable,” Rhodey said, grinning. “Tony wouldn’t forgive us if we didn’t razz you at least a little bit on the romantic front, but alright. I guess you’ve suffered enough for one night.”

The normalcy of being teased by adults who were looking out for her took the sting out of the night for Penny, and Rhodey and Pepper could see that. Pepper asked her to help Pepper make dinner, while Rhodey got everyone drinks and Morgan set places at the table. Morgan was eager and excited to have dinner with her ‘older sister’, and she asked a lot of questions about what Penny liked, didn’t like and battles Penny won.

“Dad said you took on The Vulture singlehandedly and won!” Morgan said, ignoring the mac and cheese for storytime. “He said you two fought on the beach and that you saved a bunch of people by making sure a bunch of really bad weapons didn’t make it into bad guys’ hands!”

“Yeah, that happened,” Penny said, spearing some noodles and taking a bite. Pepper made sure there were extra veggies in the meal by using veggie-based noodles and adding squash puree to her cheese sauce, and so far it seemed like Morgan didn’t realize there were any other ways of making the food. Maybe this was how they’d always eaten it and Penny didn’t know because she had been dead at the time. “What about it?”

Morgan eagerly seized the opportunity to ask more direct questions she might not have gotten answered by Tony. “Were you scared? Did you get hurt when you were facing the bad guys?”

“Yeah and yeah,” Penny responded. God, even though it was only a year ago for her, it had been six years ago for everyone else. It felt like forever ago anyway. “I was really scared, and I did get pretty hurt. It was worth it, anyway. I knew Toomes wasn’t a good person and that I had to stop him.”

“Morgan, don’t bother Penny with too many questions at once,” Pepper warned. “You’ll have plenty of time to ask your sister more later. She’s had a rough day.”

Morgan looked disappointed. “Can I ask one more?”

Pepper nodded. “One last question,” she said, “and then you have to finish those last few bites.”

Penny saw the same fire of curiosity in Morgan’s eyes that she’d seen in Mr. Stark’s eyes when he’d examined her work with the web-shooters.

“How did you become a hero?” Morgan asked, and Penny almost dropped her fork.

“I --,” Penny started, trying to figure out how to tell Morgan. “I –”

“Penny, you don’t have to answer it if it’s too personal,” Pepper said gently. “It’s okay.”

Penny shook her head. “No, it’s not that,” she responded, and then turned back to Morgan. “It’s okay. I was really curious at her age too. I still am. No, it’s just – when I was 13, I was given special abilities because of a spider bite. And while I was still figuring out how to use them, someone very special to me died. My uncle, Ben. Just before he died, he’d been trying to teach me how important it is for me to use the abilities and power I have in life to the fullest of my extent to help other people. That… inspired me, in a way. I couldn’t undo what had been done, but I could be better moving forward.”

Morgan looked awestruck, and she happily ate her dinner after that. Rhodey collected the plates when everyone was done, and he went to wash up as Pepper got Morgan started on her bedtime routine.

Penny didn’t really have anything to do for a while, but a little bit later she got a call from Happy, who was with Aunt May at their apartment. Penny reassured May that she was safe and being fed, and Happy and May assured Penny that they were safe and that when Penny didn’t come home that night, the police stopped harassing them – even if they had bugged the hallway outside the apartment.

They talked for a while before Aunt May had to go, and Penny was left with a question she’d been grappling with since dinner ended.

Before, when she’d been talking with Pepper and Rhodey, Penny had mostly been considering herself and her friends and her family. Those weren’t bad considerations, but what would Uncle Ben have counseled her to do?

If Penny could make the world a better place by coming out as Spider-Woman and using her influence and power to help people, didn’t she have a moral obligation to do that?

Pepper stopped by with pajamas and a towel for Penny to take her own shower. Even under the water, which was normally a relaxing place for her, she couldn’t stop turning the question over in her head.

Man, no wonder issues like this gave Chidi from The Good Place stomachaches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have I mentioned how much I love Rhodey? Because he's just incredible.
> 
> Find me at princessofthewhitemoon.tumblr.com!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Penny comes to a decision about coming out as Spider-Woman after talking with both Pepper and MJ.

Penny didn’t get much sleep that night. She kept tossing and turning as she tried to examine all forms of the question in her mind. Arguments for and against coming out burned their way through her thoughts, and she grappled with it the same way she grappled with liking girls when she started developing feelings for female celebrities in middle school.

Coming out of this closet was much more dangerous than coming out as bisexual had ever been for her.

Was this what she wanted her life to be? Never being able to go outside without being on guard for the nearest supervillain who wanted to take a bite out of her? Never being able to go anywhere without being treated like a celebrity?

Penny never wanted that life. She was a quiet nerd; she wanted a long and productive career where she made things that made peoples’ lives better without taking any of the credit for it. If she had her way, she would have gone into biochemical engineering and retired as a professor at some prestigious university after 40 years of hard work.

But she was also Spider-Woman, and that was a big part of her life too. It was like the opposite side of a coin – where she was quiet and easily-overlooked in her day-to-day life, she was loud and vibrant and chatty and confident as Spider-Woman.

Penny was quiet when she got dressed and went to the breakfast table. It was a little later in the morning, and there was a plate of pancakes already in the middle of the table.

“Penny! Good, you’re up,” Pepper said from the kitchen. “I was just about to send Morgan to wake you up. Help me get the glasses for everyone?”

Even in the morning, far away from the bustle of civilization, Pepper looked put together in a way Penny realized she would never fully attain. Penny nodded and grabbed the glasses, smiling when she saw the mismatched collection of clearly adult glasses and plastic ones for children molded after superheroes.

“Can I have the Spider-Woman glass?” Morgan asked, and Penny’s eyes bugged out a little when she realized there was indeed one for her.

“Sure, MoMo,” Penny replied, and grabbed herself one that was molded after Iron Man. It reminded her of one that she had as a kid, along with the mask and light-up gauntlets she wore to the Stark Expo so long ago. “I’ll even get one to match.”

Morgan was fascinated with Penny, and it was kind of fun, even if it was a little weird. Penny appreciated Morgan’s curiosity and her affection, and after the breakfast dishes were cleared Morgan dragged Penny outside so she could show her the garage and the llama they had and the treehouse Daddy made her.

Penny never had a sibling, but it felt like she’d only been away at school, and now her little sister was getting her all caught up on what had gone on while Penny was gone. Pepper called Morgan in to clean her room, which was filled with a mixture of stuffed animals and toy robots, and while Morgan was doing that Penny and Pepper got a chance to talk again.

“You’re good with her,” Pepper said, sipping on a cup of tea. She’d made one for both herself and Penny, and Penny didn’t drink tea very often, but she might start if all cups of tea were going to taste this good.

“She’s easy to love,” Penny replied, shrugging a little. “She reminds me so much of Tony. He’s everywhere in her.”

Pepper smiled sadly. “I know,” she said. “It was really hard at first, because she’s old enough to understand Daddy isn’t coming back, but not really get what ‘death’ means. So she was asking for a while if he was ever coming back. And when she finally got it, she tried to build a robot that would replace him. I had to teach her that even though a lot of people came back, Daddy wasn’t one of those people, and that robots can’t take the place of the people we love.”

Penny thought of KAREN and EDITH and Vision and the robots, Dumm-E and You, and the Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing tech Mr. Stark showed off at MIT. Maybe that wasn’t something Mr. Stark understood, or maybe it was something he knew but couldn’t help but challenge.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That had to be really hard.”

Pepper nodded and sipped her tea again. “Lots of things have been hard lately,” she said, “but I’m sure that’s something you know well. How’re you doing? Any better today?”

Penny shrugged again. “Maybe?” she said. “I just keep going over the same thoughts and the same questions.”

Pepper rubbed Penny’s back and it felt nice. While Pepper wasn’t her mom – that title went to Aunt May – having Pepper’s support during this time meant so, so much.

“Just know that Jim and I will support you no matter what you choose,” Pepper said. “Oh, before I forget. Happy called while you were outside with Morgan. He and your Aunt will be coming up for dinner; she’s going to be staying until she has to go back to work.”

Penny’s relief must have been palpable because Pepper smiled. “Good,” Penny said, “that’s her safe, at least for a little bit. I don’t know if NYPD would do anything to her, but I kinda don’t put it past them, you know? They’ve shot at me enough, even if they have pretty shit aim.”

Pepper’s smile turned into icy displeasure at the idea and Penny was suddenly very glad it wasn’t being directed at her.

“Happy also asked you to call your friends,” Pepper said after a moment. “Apparently Ned called him to ask where you were because they haven’t heard from you since you left the city and they wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“Oh, right,” Penny said, and excused herself. She went straight back to the guest room and texted both him and MJ, and MJ called her immediately after the text sent.

“Hey loser,” MJ said, no real heat in her voice. “Are you okay?”

“I’m safe,” Penny said. “I managed to get out of the city before the cops could find me. How’re you doing? I’m – I’m so sorry, I never meant to leave you behind like that.”

“No, I totally get it,” MJ said, “and honestly, I’ve been shot at enough for one summer, so actually kind of thank you? But I’m glad you’re safe.”

Something in Penny’s stomach turned. She hadn’t been there to protect MJ when she was being shot at, but then again, MJ had been able to protect herself.

“Yeah,” she said mindlessly. “Hey, how – how are things going? I haven’t really been online since… you know…”

“Probably for the best,” MJ said. “You melted Twitter, by the way. Half of the most prominent celebrities are defending you, some of the more feminist ones are shaming the people who were lusting over you because now everyone thinks you’re a minor, lots of people are calling for you to get locked up and Flash’s brain is officially broken. He posted a reaction on his Snap after the news went viral of him just struggling to process the news.”

Penny laughed a little at that. “Hope he doesn’t remember that time I stole and crashed his car,” she said, and MJ gasped at that. “In my defense, I hadn’t had Drivers Ed at that point and also I was chasing a bad guy.”

“So we’re taking the subway to every date,” MJ replied. “Great. So, are you going to stay away from the city for good?”

“I can’t,” Penny said, and she started messing with a pen she’d been using before bed. “My aunt lives there. My entire life is there. I can’t not be Spider-Woman because one asshole with a grudge is trying to ruin my life.”

“Good,” MJ said. “School would have sucked without you.”

Penny smiled, but it didn’t stay. “There are a lot of people who have been affected by what I do,” she said, “and a lot of people who don’t like Spider-Woman. I don’t even know how dangerous it’s going to be to be out and about anymore, much less go to school. You know?”

MJ sighed. “I know, webhead,” she said, “but you – you don’t back down from something because it’s hard. You never have. I mean, I watched you save our friends in Washington, and then again in Europe, and I know you weren’t with us when we went to the Met before everyone got Snapped. You were fighting, weren’t you?’

“I wasn’t supposed to be there,” Penny admitted. “Mr. Stark tried to send me home but I snuck aboard anyway. I blacked out on an alien planet and woke up there five years later.”

There was a brief pause as MJ absorbed exactly what Penny said.

“God, your life is so weird,” she said, and then they were both laughing for a long while.

When they’d calmed down, Penny saw Morgan in the doorway. “Hey, I have to go,” she said, “but tell Ned I’ll call him later.”

MJ agreed and they hung up. Penny spent the rest of the afternoon playing Barbies and robots with Morgan, and as she played along Penny turned the question over a few more times.

She knew now what she was going to do. Penny just wanted to make sure she knew what was going to happen after she did it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has left a comment or kudos on the fic! I really do feed on feedback, so seeing responses to my work really helps me out.
> 
> Find me at princessofthewhitemoon.tumblr.com.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aunt May and Happy arrive.

Happy and May got there an hour or two before dinner. Penny threw herself into May’s arms with as much strength as she dared use; this summer had been hard, but the last few weeks especially so. May walked them over to a porch swing and let Penny cry herself out there while Pepper, Happy and Rhodey all went inside to talk, and when Penny was done crying, May brought her up to speed on what was going on in the city.

There was a massive divide, and it seemed largely generational. The older adults, especially the more conservative ones, wanted her to face justice for all of the damage she caused as Spider-Woman. All of the times she fled an active crime scene just before the cops got there; all the people she injured in an attempt to stop them from hurting or killing other people.

The younger folks, especially the ones who knew her from YouTube, TikTok or social media, were all defending her. Her classmates were flooding social media with all the times she saved lives, including theirs, and there were warring Twitter hashtags in support and against her.

“I wish Mr. Stark was here,” Penny said bitterly, curled up in her aunt’s arms. “He always knew what to do and how to handle things.”

Her aunt chuckled a little and brushed some hair out of Penny’s face. “No, he didn’t,” May said. “He was making it up as he went along. You’re too young to remember most of it, and your hero worship was too strong, but he was a mess for the first couple of years as a hero. He was a mess before he was a hero too. Always making headlines about different messes he was making, and there was a lot of footage of him being drunk or out of control.”

“Well, he would know how to handle this,” Penny said, refusing to concede the point. “He was outed as Iron Man. He was publicly known as a superhero.”

“And he was put on trial by Congress for it,” Aunt May said, “and he was an adult when it happened. In his 40s. You, Penny, are 16. Your biggest worries should be your girlfriend and your grades and what colleges you want to apply for this year.”

Penny sniffled a few more times, and Aunt May hugged her again before helping them both stand up. “Come on,” she said, “let’s get you cleaned up a little, sweetie. It’s gonna be okay.”

Penny nodded and they went inside. Aunt May fixed them both a cup of tea while Penny went to wash her face, and while it didn’t do much for her acne, it did help her face look less blotchy and her eyes look less bloodshot-red. Penny came out of the bathroom and went straight for the couch, curling up in a throw blanket, and Aunt May brought over two cups of something that smelled much better than the tea they had at home.

“Drink up, baby,” May said, and Penny did, almost scalding her tongue. Pepper, Rhodey and Happy came out to the living room and they had the decency to not comment on Penny’s (clearly recent) emotional breakdown.

It was nice of them.

Morgan came out of her room when she heard Uncle Happy was in the house, and the conversation changed for a while as Pepper and Rhodey made dinner. They all knew not to let May near the stove, so May stayed next to Penny for a while, rubbing her back and telling her about all the mundane gossip at the hospital. Gabrielle, a nurse who worked the night shift with Aunt May, was expecting, while Damian, the male nurse in the unit, was going to propose to his partner. Jessie started selling some cheap jewelry for a pyramid scheme, and Louisa was going back to school to get her master’s degree in nursing.

Penny didn’t say much, but she leaned into the contact and made all the appropriate noises that indicated she was listening.

After dinner, Morgan went to give herself a bath (she was a big girl now!) while Penny, Pepper, May, Happy and Rhodey all went into one of the other rooms to talk about Penny’s decision. Pepper poured herself and the other adults a drink, and she was about to pour one for Penny when she remembered the girl was still 16.

“Maybe Tony affected me more than I thought,” she said to herself, “about to give booze to a minor. Can I get you something else, Penny? Water or soda or juice? We also have tea.”

“I’ll take some water,” Penny said, and Pepper came back a few minutes later with water in a crystal glass worth much more than any glass Penny had ever held before in her life. “Thanks.”

Pepper sat down at the table across from Penny, and Penny’s anxiety spiked. This felt so much more serious than having Mr. Stark waltz into her apartment and pull up YouTube videos while sitting on her bed and calling Aunt May hot.

“Have you figured out your decision yet?” Pepper asked, and Penny nodded.

“I want to go public,” she said, trying to make her voice sound more confident of the decision than she was. “I don’t want to live the rest of my life constantly looking over my shoulder and trying to defend a lie.”

Pepper smiled sadly. “I know what you mean,” she said, and pulled Penny’s hand into her, squeezing it slightly. At Penny’s side, May started rubbing her back again. “I can arrange a press conference where we can tell the world your story, if you want.”

Penny nodded slightly. “How much does my life change because of this?” Penny asked. “Do I have to move or change schools or something?”

“Move, yes,” Pepper said. “We can get you and May somewhere safe, under the same protections as the lake house, so people don’t know where you live. Maybe the Tower. Tony was in the process of buying it back when the battle happened; I think he knew something was going to happen to the Compound.”

Penny blinked. “But… the Tower is in Manhattan,” she said, frowning. “I’d be a lot closer to school, but really far from Queens.”

“Maybe you can find a new patrol route,” May suggested, “or make going out there something you do on the weekends.”

Penny didn’t like that idea, but she couldn’t focus on it for too long at the moment. Pepper reached into her briefcase and pulled out thick, official binders. “You’re also going to need to sign the Accords.”

“Really?” Penny hadn’t signed them yet, but that was because Mr. Stark said she was too young. Penny might be legally 21 years old, but she still had the body and the mind of a 16-year-old who was turning 17 in just a few weeks.

“Really,” Pepper said. “We went to work on the Accords during the Blip. With so many missing, and so many governments in shambles, the Avengers responded to a lot of crises. In order to do that, they needed more flexibility to move, and the UN practically gave it to them. I’ll see if I can find you a presentation, but the point is that the Avengers are more like volunteer firefighters than a paramilitary organization now, which made everyone – including Cap’s team – feel a lot better.”

That did sound a lot better than it had been. And being considered a volunteer firefighter meant Penny would probably be more protected legally when it came to what happened when supervillains started tearing up the block. “Okay,” she said, “I’ll sign, then.”

“Good,” Pepper said, and typed a few things on a tablet she had with her. “I’d like you to sit down with lawyers and a PR squad sometime today. The ability to go public with this has already been stolen from us, but if we’re going to tell the world who you are, I want to show the world the best possible version. The version we all know and love.”

That scared and worried Penny. Pepper was making this all sound like she was becoming some sort of celebrity, and while going viral on TikTok was fun, Penny didn’t want this kind of spotlight.

“What if I just want to keep to myself?” Penny asked. “I don’t want to be Spider-Woman all the time. I want to go to college after I graduate.”

“Unfortunately, that’s going to be a lot harder,” Pepper said. “You’ve fought a lot of people, and at least some of them are going to carry grudges. You’re going to want to have a way to have your suit on you at all times from now on – or at least any time you’re not in an Avengers-specific space.”

Penny put the water down and looked at her hands. This was so much to take in, and there was so much changing so fast. “I guess this means no more going out for Thai food when Aunt May burns dinner, huh?”

Pepper’s eyes crinkled softly, and May pulled her close. “No, Penny,” Pepper said, “at least not for a while. I’m sorry, that’s a privilege that people like us don’t really get to enjoy.”

Privilege. The word tasted like ash on the back of Penny’s throat. She’d gotten so used to using it as a word for systemic injustices that she forgot it had other meanings too.

“I don’t want to go on talk shows and stuff,” Penny said suddenly. “I don’t want to be famous. If I have to do this, I want to work towards a future where I can get a hotdog and not see an unflattering picture of it on my phone a half hour after I paid for it.”

Pepper sighed. She tapped some buttons on her pad and the room filled with projections of Penny’s face. She was on the cover of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the home pages for CNN, BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post. Clips about her story were being widely shared on YouTube and Twitter, and she felt her heart sink into her stomach.

MJ said Penny had melted Twitter, but Penny hadn’t really processed that until now.

“Penny,” May said carefully, “I know you didn’t choose this. But this is our lives now, and it might be this way for a while.”

She wanted to run. She wanted to hide. She wanted to retreat into some dark corner and let this all pass over her. She wanted to go back to school in the fall and go through another two years of being a super nerd in nerd school, and then she wanted to graduate and go to college and change the world in more subtle ways than just punching her way through everything.

Maybe she would still get those chances, but Penny had to push through this before she could see any of that ever again.

“Okay,” she said, “okay. Press conference. I come out to the world. We move somewhere safer, and I always have to have my suit on me because a lot of people are going to want to throw down. I sign the Accords and I get used to being a shut-in for a while. Anything else?”

“I want to use the press conference as a way to change the story and show our support for you,” Pepper said. “I’d like to announce to the world you’re an heir to Stark Industries and have some Avengers up there as a show of support. Maybe Rhodey, Sam, Wanda, Scott and Dr. Strange. Is that okay with you?”

Penny grabbed the nearest pillow and started screaming into it for a minute. When she was done, she set it back down and looked at the adults in the room like nothing happened.

“Sure,” she said, her voice forced and overly chipper. “That sounds like a great idea. Let’s do that.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Penny attends a press conference. It doesn't go well.

Penny didn’t feel like herself.

It was time for the press conference and Penny was wearing the most expensive dress she had ever seen, let alone put on her body. Professionals had come in to do her hair, makeup and nails, and she had spent hours having various parts of herself waxed, plucked, shaved or trimmed.

She felt less like a teenage superhero and more like a very fancy chicken, about to be carved up and served to the world for its immediate consumption.

Penny’s only consolation was that Aunt May had gone through a lesser variant of this. She was going to be in the room when Penny was making her announcement, as moral support, and Pepper spent a lot of money to make sure both Parker women would look their absolute best.

It wasn’t much of a consolation.

Pepper came through again to let Penny know it was five minutes until the room would be ready for her, and Penny’s stomach swooped. She flexed her hands, trying to adjust to the weight of the acrylic nails on her fingertips, and grounded herself in the feeling of the dull edges against her palm.

Penny never had nails like this. It would be dangerous in any lab if nails like this tore through the latex gloves and having nails at the length they were at now made it difficult for Penny to make fists. The two biggest parts of her life, crimefighting and science, and she didn’t feel like she could go do either of them as she currently was.

Someone knocked on the door and Penny stood up, wobbling in the heels Pepper bought her to compliment the dress. God, Penny felt like such a fraud, and she hadn’t even said anything yet.

Could everyone tell that she was an imposter, a teenager trying and failing to pass as more than she was?

“Just follow the script,” Pepper said, squeezing Penny’s arm a little as she helped the teenage hero to the press room. “Just stick with what we’ve prepared and you’ll be okay, Penny, I promise.”

Penny nodded and just to the entrance of the room while she was introduced. Pepper said a few words about how Penny was a smart, caring girl who had been dragged through the mud over the past few days, because of circumstances beyond her control, and gestured for Penny to come out.

It was like Penny was on autopilot, because she couldn’t remember making the choice to walk out there. Penny stepped up to the podium and found the teleprompter that had the prepared remarks on it.

“Hello,” she said, hating how her voice broke a little. “My name is Penny Parker. I’m a sophomore at Midtown School of Science and Technology. I’m 16, but I’m turning 17 in a few weeks.”

There was a line in the teleprompter that told her to pause and take a deep breath. Penny did, closing her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again Penny took a second to stare out at the sea of faces and cameras and lights.

It was now or never.

“I am Spider-Woman,” she said, gripping tightly to the podium. “My name is Penny Parker, and I’ve been Spider-Woman since I was 13 years old.”

The room got louder as reporters started standing up to ask her questions. Pepper told Penny if that happened, she had to remain quiet and wait for the room to settle back down again, so that was what Penny did.

“I received my powers from an accident,” Penny said, “and when I realized what I could do, I wanted to help people with them. I started out on my own, and I operated that way at first until Mr. Stark found me through social media. He offered to help me out – he gave me a new suit and tried to make sure I wasn’t in over my head. I made a lot of mistakes at first, but he was there to help me out.”

Penny had to pause for her own moment there. Talking about Mr. Stark was still really hard for her. Because of that, she almost missed the start of the next line on the teleprompter.

“I fought with Iron Man, Dr. Strange and other heroes against Thanos before the First Snap, which I was taken out by,” Penny said, her voice wavering a little. “When the Hulk Snapped the second time, I was brought back, and I fought alongside a coalition of heroes from across the universe to protect our homes and take Thanos down.”

The line of Avengers behind her dared the audience to say that she hadn’t.

“Quentin Beck was not the hero he made himself out to be,” Penny said, pushing forward. “I trusted him, especially after he helped save me and several of my classmates from what appeared to be imminent destruction in Europe. He was a former Stark employee, using highly-advanced technology to create illusions designed to make people scared. That stopped working quickly, though, and once he realized I was onto him he attacked me before proceeding to attack the city of London, which my classmates were visiting at the time.”

There was no line for her to take another pause but Penny had to. Her mouth was dry and her voice was wavering. After a few beats, she gripped the podium again and continued.

“Beck attacked me again when I went to confront him. He was struck by his own drones, though, and with his last moments framed me for his death. I did not go out to kill him when I went to confront him, and I did not use the drones he was controlling to kill him. After he was struck, I regained control over the drones. The voice in the background of the video released is an incomplete audio sample of me stopping the drones from doing any more damage.”

And finally, the part Penny had been looking forward to the least.

“I will accept a few questions from the press at this time.”

If the room was louder before, it was cacophony now. Everyone stood up at the same time, with flashing cameras going off in all different directions, and Penny called on the first person whose nametag she could see.

“Mr. Robertson?”

The reporter, an older black gentleman, nodded. “Thank you, Miss Parker,” he said. “Miss Parker, you have largely avoided working with the authorities until this point. Is there a reason for that?”

Penny nodded. “Yes, and the reason is that I was terrified of what would happen if I was found out,” Penny said. “My aunt is very supportive of me, but she was not exactly thrilled when she saw me in my suit for the first time. My aunt has always been one of my biggest advocates, and so if she was less than happy with me at first, I didn’t really want to find out what the NYPD had to say about me.”

There was a smattering of laughter through the room, and even Mr. Robertson smiled. “That’s understandable,” he said, and Penny felt a little less nervous. “So will you be available to work with the NYPD from now on?”

“I’m not sure to what extent we could collaborate on,” Penny said, “but I welcome the opportunity to work with anyone trying to make this city a safer place to live.”

That was appropriately vague and one of the canned answers Penny and Pepper had rehearsed. Penny moved onto the next reporter, a Mr. Chet Brinkley.

“Ms. Parker,” he began, looking up at her severely. “Are you officially an Avenger?”

Penny swallowed and smiled. “I am currently loosely associated with the Avengers,” she said. “I have helped them out on several missions in the past, but everyone is eager to see me graduate high school before I become a permanent member of the team.”

The next reporter was a Ms. Cynthia Randolph. She had a way about her that reminded Penny of Rita Skeeter, and for some reason, Penny felt her skin crawl when the older woman was looking at her.

“Ms. Parker, you described getting your powers as an accident, right?”

Penny nodded, unsure of where this was going. Ms. Randolph continued speaking, and Penny could tell she was building to a point.

“Ms. Parker, have you ever sustained life-threatening injuries as a result of your superhero work?”

“I mean, I’m pretty sure I died in outer space, but that was because of the Snap,” Penny said, “so I’m pretty sure I would have been a goner no matter if I was in space or on a field trip.”

“Any other significant injuries, Ms. Parker?”

Penny shrugged. “I’ve been beaten up a fair amount of times,” she said. “As it turns out, if you stop someone from stealing a car they get pretty cranky.”

Ms. Randolph did not look amused, even as another round of chuckles went around the other reporters.

“Ms. Parker, you have just told us all a story of being coddled by the superhero community for years while you caused property destruction trying to figure out what you could do and how you could get away with it. You did so without being a signatory to the Accords, which would have set up rules and regulations for how and where you could act. Under your own admission, it sounds like you have been a child soldier for Stark Industries for years.”

Penny’s face paled and she grabbed at the microphone in front of her. Pepper gestured offstage and security forces started making their way towards the center of the room, where Ms. Randolph was.

“That’s not true – I’m not a –”

Randolph was holding tightly to the microphone even as Happy tried to wrestle it away from her. “Ms. Parker, are you aware of any other child soldiers associated with the company? Are you the only one, or are there more of you? Was the accident that caused your powers created by Stark?”

Pepper strode out to the podium then, looking as angry as Penny had ever seen her. “That’s it for questions,” Pepper said, and pulled Penny off the stage with her, the other Avengers following behind them.

One of the curses of Penny’s powers was unnaturally good hearing. As the reporters were ushered out of the room, Penny could hear a lot of people talking about that last question and both her and Pepper’s reactions to it. Wanda had her hand on Penny’s shoulder and Penny leaned into it until Aunt May came back into the room, at which point Penny almost launched herself into her aunt.

“That could have gone a lot better,” Rhodey said, frowning as he stepped out of the Iron Patriot armor. “What the hell happened? I thought we had this under control.”

“We did until that last question,” Pepper said, and she was tapping furiously on her tablet. “I’m so sorry that happened, Penny. That was not how it was supposed to go. Every reporter we had in that room was pre-screened, and she shouldn’t have asked something like that.”

Penny’s phone buzzed and she saw the headline “How Young is Too Young to Save The World?” – which was by far the most charitable to her. Others accused Mr. Stark of brainwashing her, of taking advantage of her age and other terrible things.

The worst part of the ordeal, though, was seeing the uncomfortable expressions on the faces of some of the other Avengers. Both Dr. Strange and Sam were looking away from her, and Penny couldn’t help but realize that they were thinking of how young she’d been when she’d fought with or alongside them.

In Germany, Penny was 14. In space, Penny had been 15.

“I’m not a child soldier,” Penny said, shaking her head. “I’m not. I’m just a normal teenager who was trying to do the best I could with what I had. No one gave me orders.”

Even as she said it, though, she remembered moments with Mr. Stark. When he told her to suit up and then when he told her to stand down after she was injured. When he took her suit after the mess up at the Ferry, and when he gave it back after she took down the Vulture.

In space, when Mr. Stark looked at her, sorrow in his eyes before officially ‘knighting’ her as an official Avengers. And now, even after his death, when he left her full control of a system of drones that she could call down whenever she wanted.

“I’m not a child soldier,” Penny repeated. “I’m not.”

Sam looked her dead in the eyes.

“Yeah, kid,” he said, “I think you were."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was directly impacted by my feelings when I went to see Spider-Man: Homecoming for the first time in theaters. With previous incarnations of the story, I was always younger than Peter was supposed to be in the story, so it didn't phase me as much when he was being shot at and getting the tar beaten out of him. I was in college when Homecoming came out, though, and seeing someone who was supposed to be a 14 or 15-year-old kid under that collapsed building -- it changed how I looked at the franchise and at how I perceive a young Peter. He's not supposed to be in those sorts of situations and it was an absolute failure of Tony, a much more experienced adult and superhero, that Peter was there with help or even a way to call for backup.
> 
> That scene under the collapsed building also helped me forgive myself for who I was as an overstressed, overextended teenager with fuck-all support and rapidly-developing mental health issues, but that's a story for another day.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team learns more about Penny's past and what drives her.

After what Sam says, Penny can’t look at the other Avengers and they can’t look at her.

“Did you know how young she was during Germany?” Sam asks Rhodey, and he shakes his head quietly.

“None of us did,” Rhodey said. “Not even Natasha. If she did, she wouldn’t have let Penny out there. Tony rocked up to Germany with her in tow and told us she was a new friend out of Queens.”

Sam doesn’t look more relieved, but he’s not angry at Rhodey. Penny can tell he’s still angry, though.

“How were you recruited?” he asks, and Penny stops staring at her lap long enough to look at him.

“Mr. Stark found me on YouTube,” she said. “He found me through clips people posted on YouTube. He knew everything about me, promised he wouldn’t tell my aunt if I went with him. Asked why I was doing what I was doing.”

Sam’s expression changed, but Penny didn’t know the new Captain America well enough to understand what that meant. “You were already doing this? He didn’t shove you into a supersuit and fly you to Germany?”

“I mean, he upgraded my tech times a million,” Penny said, “but I was doing it for six months before he showed up.”

Sam sighed, and it looked like he was a little relieved. “That means he didn’t recruit you,” he said. “It was absolutely a failure on his part that you were in that fight, but we can at least work with this. Most recruiters in the Armed Forces will start developing relationships with kids at the local high schools through ROTC with kids, some of them even your age then, but no one expects a cadet in the program to pick up arms and go into battle.”

“No one expects an ROTC recruit to be able to stop a car going 40 miles per hour from slamming into bus with less than twenty feet of deceleration space,” Penny shot back. “I’m different. I can do things other people can’t. When you can do what I can do, and you don’t, and the bad things happen, they happen because of you.”

Wanda squeezed her hand, looking at the younger hero with something that felt like sympathy. Empathy, maybe. Sam looked at her and looked angry.

“Pen,” he said, “that is an excellent slogan for when you’re an adult. Maybe even for right now. I don’t know – you can’t legally vote yet, you can’t drink or buy cigarettes, but you’re old enough to get a driver’s license and a job. You can make some of the calls in your own life. But you are not yet 17, and 17 is the absolute youngest a person can be when they enlist in the Armed Forces – and that’s if they get parental consent.”

Sam massaged his temples and blew out a hot breath.

“Our government would not have asked you to risk your life to save people at your age. In fact, the government would have taken a serious look at your home environment to find out why you felt like you needed to save other people while you were so young. What, were you inspired by an activist? Malala Yousafazi? Greta Thunberg?”

Penny shook her head, her lips pressed into a thin line. “I held my uncle as he died after we had an argument. I’d just gotten my powers and I was getting into trouble trying to figure out what they did. Staying out late, talking back, shit like that. He was yelling at me, and I stormed out of our apartment to take a walk because I just – I couldn’t deal with it.” She felt a little cold – she hadn’t told anyone what really happened to Uncle Ben before. “Went to the bodega to get a drink and some snacks. There was someone who was stealing from the store while I was in there, but I didn’t care because I was still really pissed off from the fight with my uncle. I left before the dude actually stole anything, and I was about to go back to my uncle when the dude ran out of the store. Uncle Ben – he…”

Pushed himself in front of her, which spooked the robber. Sacrificed himself for her. She still couldn’t say it. Wanda squeezed her hand again, and Aunt May placed her hand on Penny’s shoulder.

“By the time the ambulance got there it was too late.”

“Loss can push us to want to make things better, even if the person we lost can’t come back,” Wanda said. “When my brother died, all I wanted to do was make sure other people didn’t hurt the same way I did.”

Sam was a little less angry – or maybe he still was, but he wasn’t angry at her.

“I’m sorry that happened to you, Penny,” he said, “but you shouldn’t have been fighting after that. You shouldn’t have had to. You should have gotten therapy.”

“Oh yeah, because that’s so easy and so cheap when the main breadwinner dies,” Penny snarled. “My aunt and I got through it, didn’t we?”

“Penny,” Aunt May said gently, but she turned back to Sam. “Sam, she isn’t wrong, but you aren’t either. I should have had us both go – but those first few months were so, so hard, and I didn’t know what I was doing half the time. I picked up so many shifts that we barely got to see each other. And things never really calmed down again after that.”

“Which is how you were able to become Spider-Woman without your aunt noticing,” Sam inferred. “Why – why Spider-Woman? Why not something like Spider-Girl?”

“I had a bat mitzvah a few months before that,” Penny said simply. “In the eyes of my community, I was responsible for my own actions. And… honestly, do you take Spider-Girl or Spider-Woman more seriously?”

Aunt May blinked. Penny’s mother and father were both Jewish, as was Uncle Ben, but Aunt May was agnostic. It didn’t matter in a lot of ways, but May didn’t get the significance of the ceremony; she thought it was a great way to celebrate a milestone, but grouped it into the same category as a quinceanera or a sweet sixteen. Penny had spent months studying Hebrew so she could correctly form her lips around the words, learning the blessings and the prayers and what it meant to be part of the community as a young woman.

Penny didn’t know how she felt about G-d, and she wasn’t particularly observant, but after Uncle Ben had been buried she remembered a concept she learned in Hebrew class. It was from the Mishnah, not one of the areas she had to memorize for her ceremony, but when she heard the concept it was like her entire worldview shifted into place.

It could be translated a bunch of different ways, but under Reform Judaism the phrase meant ‘repair the world’. That she – that everyone – was obligated to help fix what was broken, to help those who were hurting and stand up for those who were being wronged.

It meshed with foundations earlier built – along with part of her Torah readings, which urged her ‘justice, justice shall you pursue’ – that had made Penny so sure that at 13 she was meant to take the gifts she had been given and do what she could with them, to prevent other people from facing the same grief her family did.

Strange looked at her like he understood her better now, and so did Scott. Pepper sighed a little.

“Sam is right, Penny,” she said. “You shouldn’t have been in that position. And Tony – Tony wasn’t thinking clearly when he brought you to Germany. I think he knew that after he came back. Would you… could you tell that story to more people? To help more people understand why you became Spider-Woman?”

“Another press conference?” Penny asked, her face showing exactly what she thought of that idea.

Pepper shook her head. “No, not a conference,” she said. “That ship has sailed. I was thinking a sit-down, one-on-one interview, with someone who won’t grill you too hard. Barbara Walters, maybe, if she hasn’t retired yet.”

Penny’s phone was still blowing up with notifications from the last failed attempt. Her stomach twisted at the idea of someone using her words and her experiences to attack her dead mentor, and she knew that was what was happening as they all spoke. Penny didn’t want that, and she didn’t really want another go at being eaten alive by the press.

“Maybe,” Penny allowed, frowning. “Maybe not for a few days, though? I kinda just want to curl up in a ball and not answer any more questions, especially about being a child soldier or whatever. I chose to be what I am. Mr. Stark just gave me a boost and saved my neck a few times.”

“Okay, honey,” May said, and shot Pepper a look over Penny’s head. “How about you guys go back to the lake house? I have to be at work tomorrow, or I’d join you.”

Penny nodded, and she was herded back out the back way, far from the views of reporters or photographers. Her phone kept blowing up, and even on silence the notifications were too much; she couldn’t get through an anxiety relief session on her phone without being messaging. Penny frowned and turned off her phone, leaning into Wanda, and Wanda held her close.

“I was also young when I joined the team,” Wanda said. “I was 19, a legal adult in my country and this one, and they were not happy then either. But I proved myself and they came around. Sam will come around on having you on the team, Penny. You’ll see.”

The reassurances were nice but being held was even better. Penny had a thick sweatshirt over her, which had helped keep her profile down before and after the press conference from hell, and she was curled up into it as much as she could be.

“I know, I know,” she said. “I just don’t want the Avengers to get in trouble because of me. Now that everyone knows I’m under 18 – everything is going to change.”

“Things have already changed many times since you started this job,” Wanda said kindly. “When you put on your first suit, the Avengers were a unified team. Then we weren’t. Thanos wiped out half this planet, including both of us, and then we were brought back. Tony died, and Sam became Captain America. We’ve gotten through change before and we’ll get through it now.”

Penny nodded against Wanda. She didn’t know Wanda all that well, but the press conference from hell left Penny feeling vulnerable and bare, and having someone, anyone to lean against was really, really nice. That it was Wanda, who seemed to understand her best of any of her other teammates, was even better.

Rhodey looked at her and saw Mr. Stark, or at least a ghost of Mr. Stark. Pepper saw the ghost too. Sam saw someone who wasn’t supposed to be there, and while she didn’t know Scott or Dr. Strange well, she knew they didn’t know much about her, either.

“What if they stop me from fighting because I’m too young or something?” Penny asked in a half-whisper, like she was afraid of saying it too loudly or else it would come true. “I’m doing good work here, now. I don’t want to give it up because I didn’t have the best start.”

Wanda stroked Penny’s hair. “You are not the only one who did not get the best start,” Wanda said, but didn’t elaborate. The description covered a lot of people, including members both past (Natasha, Tony, Bruce) and those present (Wanda, Scott, Carol). “Besides. You did not ask for permission to start being a hero. Why should you need their permission to keep being a hero?”

“Besides the fact that what I’ve been doing for the past several years is technically illegal?” Penny responded.

“That didn’t stop you before, either,” Wanda said back, no condemnation in her tone. “You said it yourself. You are different. We all are, or we wouldn’t do what we do.”

“Do you ever wish you weren’t different?” Penny asked quietly.

Wanda thought of Pietro and Sokovia. Thought of Lagos and the attack, thought of using her powers against the people who would be her future teammates. Thought about being imprisoned for being on the wrong side, thought of Vision and their brief romance before he was ripped out of their world.

“Sometimes,” Wanda admitted. “Sometimes I do.”

“What do you do when you feel that way?”

Wanda brushed some of Penny’s hair out of her face. “I take a breath and then I keep moving,” she said. “It’s all I can do. All we can ever do.”

There was a beat of silence between them as Penny absorbed that thought. Neither of them could go back to the past and undo what was done – at least, not now that the Infinity Gems had been put back in place.

“Okay,” Penny said, and leaned on Wanda a little more. “I think I can do that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am done with school! I’ve finished my master’s degree and I graduate on Dec. 14, so expect more frequent updates from here on out.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has given kudos, commented or left a bookmark. It really does mean so much to me!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Penny becomes a legal superhero and gets another perspective on her situation before everything changes.

Unfortunately, they couldn’t go directly back to the lake house. They went from Stark Industries’ headquarters to the U.N. building, because Penny needed to become a signatory on the Accords, and the longer she wasn’t the longer she could be charged for the actions she took while she was a vigilante. Part of signing was immunity from prosecution for any and all crimes committed before she signed on.

When Penny read that, it felt like a targeted gift for her from Mr. Stark. She knew that wasn’t the case – Wanda, after all, worked with Ultron before she joined the team, and Hulk broke Harlem – but for some reason she couldn’t shake the feeling that Mr. Stark was looking out for her even from beyond the grave.

There was so much paperwork to fill out. Dr. Strange and Scott left the group after the press conference, so it was just Penny, Pepper, Rhodey, Wanda, Sam and Happy there, and Happy had disappeared off somewhere else. Pepper made sure Penny understood everything she was signing, and Wanda got Penny a cool pack for her hand when it started cramping up halfway through signing.

“This means that I won’t get carted off to the Raft for being a hero, right?” Penny asked, even though she knew she already signed the agreement saying she wouldn’t be.

“The Raft was decommissioned,” Pepper said. “Ross was one of the Snapped, and without his presence in Washington it was easier to negotiate a fair agreement for everyone. You won’t get taken to the Raft, Penny. No one will.”

She nodded and signed the last paper of that batch before resting her hand on the cool pack again. The last time her hand hurt this much was finals freshman year, when the Economics teacher gave them an open-book exam and a bunch of essay questions to make sure they understood it. There had been so much writing in that one-hour-long stretch that Penny’s hand hadn’t recovered for the rest of the day, and she was sure her hand was going to be similarly out of commission after this.

“Let’s break for lunch soon,” Rhodey said, seeing how she flexed her hand to try to deal with some of the cramps. “It’s about time anyway, and if I remember right, Tony said the little spider had one hell of a metabolism.”

“I do,” she admitted, blushing a little. Teenage girls weren’t supposed to be like this, weren’t supposed to want to eat everything in sight, but Penny burned a lot of energy and calories swinging around NYC. Sometimes there just really wasn’t anything better than a loaded hot dog from a cart, especially since those meals helped keep Aunt May’s food budget down.

“I could eat as well,” Wanda said, and Pepper pulled out her phone. The UN had a cafeteria they could all get food from, but Pepper chose to have something delivered. Penny had the strong feeling they’d been through this before, especially with all the heroes who had been Snapped like she was.

A half-hour later there were sandwiches for everyone, and Penny ate hers quietly. She’d turned her phone off in the wake of the press conference, which meant that when she did turn it back on she was probably going to get flooded by alerts, but right now she couldn’t deal with that.

Was she a child soldier? When Mr. Stark asked her to come help out in Germany, she’d been honored. He didn’t put guns in her hands, though, and he came asking for her help. He didn’t enlist her.

“Penny for your thoughts, kid?” Rhodey asked, sitting next to her, and she couldn’t help but groan.

“Mr. Stark used to use that all the time,” Penny said, and shrugged before taking another bite. “I don’t know. I – what if Sam is right? I just wanted to help, and Mr. Stark gave me better tools to help more people. It’s not like he made me become Spider-Woman.”

“I know, kid,” Rhodey said, and sighed. “Tony… didn’t always make good decisions. I know that. Pepper knows that. Everyone on the team knows it. But… he always tried to do what was right, and I know he was trying to do right by you. He used to call me and rant about what you’d gotten into and what he was doing to make sure you were safer. That whole stunt with the plane scared the shit out of him.”

“Really?” Penny asked, laughing a little. “Because, you know, it wasn’t really a walk in the park for me either.”

“Really,” Rhodey said. “He freaked the fuck out. Tony started out with the phrase ‘goddamn teenagers’ and finished with a promise to make sure you could always get help if you needed it.”

Penny really did laugh then. Talking about ‘really old’ movies or music was a fun way for her to tease Mr. Stark, get back at him for all the different cracks about how young she was. “That sounds like him,” she said.

And Rhodey was right. She’d had the support of Happy when she needed assistance but couldn’t get through to anyone else. And the team was supporting her now, even though she was only barely an Avenger. Even though she’d initially said no to becoming part of the group.

“You were in the military, just like Sam was,” Penny started, frowning a little. “Do you think I was --?”

“No,” Rhodey said. “No, I don’t. Should you have been in that fight, considering how young you were and how little you had to do with the fight? No, but we shouldn’t have had that fight anyway to begin with. Pen, there’s a world of difference between what the world thinks of child soldiers and what you were doing.”

Hearing someone else say that – especially an older adult – helped Penny breathe a little easier.

“Good,” she said. “I – I didn’t want to be a soldier. I just wanted to help people, you know? Stick up for the little people. I never meant to – to be an Avenger or go to space or anything like that.”

“I know, kid,” Rhodey said, and sighed. “I know.”

Lunch finished and Penny had to sign even more papers. By the end of the session, her hand ached and ached badly, and she was clearly avoiding using it as much as possible. Rhodey caught a ride with Pepper and Penny, while Sam and Happy chose to stay in the city. Sam said he had business, and Happy said he wanted to check up on how May was doing.

Soon, Pepper, Rhodey and Penny were on the road. The car was electric-powered and self-driving, and Penny couldn’t stop staring at some of the features in the vehicle.

“There were some big advances in technology during the time you were gone,” Rhodey said, grinning at Penny’s expression. “Lot of people poured their heart and soul into making things better for the people who were left behind.”

“I know,” Penny said. “I’ve been trying to catch up, but this is the first time I’ve ever been in a car like this.”

Pepper was looking over papers in the passenger’s seat.

“We should be getting back soon,” Pepper said, looking at the time. “Morgan is at her daycare right now, but we’re going to need to go pick her up before we get home. Penny, feel like helping me make dinner?”

“Sure,” Penny said, flexing her hand again. The soreness was starting to go away, anyway. “What are we having?”

“Haven’t gotten that far yet, Pen, but I’ll let you know when I figure it out.” Pepper took a call, and Penny decided to focus on the scenery outside the car window.

What only felt like a few years ago, she’d never been outside the city. Now she’d been to Washington, to Europe, to space, but that meant she still hadn’t seen much of upstate New York, other than the times she’d been to the compound. They didn’t take the same roads to get to the lake house as when they went to the Compound, and she liked seeing the rolling hills and forests and even the blank spaces.

Penny had started dozing off when her spider-sense jerked her away. She craned her head around, looking out the windows, and felt her spider-sense spike again.

“We’re in dang—”

Penny was cut off by Rhodey, who started yelling as he swerved to avoid something on the road in front of them. Penny and Pepper both screamed, and then whatever had been in the road in front of them started firing on the car.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Pepper yelled, and she looked back wildly. They were still on the road but the thing wasn’t behind them anymore, and she didn’t dare stick her head out the window to get a better view. “James, get us out of here!”

Rhodey was already reassuming control of the car, and he was speeding through the darkening backroads. “Call the suits,” he told Pepper. “Shit, we’re sitting ducks if we stay on the road. Penny, you got your suit on under those clothes?”

“Yes sir!” Penny said back and started changing in the back. There were sounds of explosions as shots from above hit far too close to the car. “What do you need me to do?”

“Hold on,” Rhodey said, swerving the car through both sides of the yellow line. It was dangerous and risky, even if there wasn’t anyone else on the road, but it meant the bad guys were less likely to be able to get a lock on them.

Penny had just gotten stripped down to her suit when the bad guys got smart. Instead of shooting at them, whoever was firing on them from above decided to shoot ahead of them. There was another loud explosion and then part of the road just wasn’t there anymore, and a couple of large trees were falling into their path.

Rhodey cursed and hit the brakes, tried to redirect the car, but there wasn’t enough time. The vehicle hit the trees and came to a sudden stop. The engine block disintegrated into a mash of metal, pressed up again large splinters of wood, and Penny knocked her head on the back of Pepper’s seat.

The hit was hard, and for a minute Penny couldn’t process anything. The world was dizzy and there was this loud, unidentifiable sound ringing in her ears. As the ringing faded, Penny could hear the sound of footsteps, and then she was yanked out of the backseat.

“STOP IT,” she yelled, kicking blindly, but she never connected with anything but air. “LET GO OF ME! PEPPER! RHODEY!”

They were passed out in the front seat, having taken the brunt of the collision and the airbags. Pepper’s phone was on the center console, still on the line with someone, and both she and Rhodey were twitching like they were trying to wake up.

“Shut the fuck up, Spider-Brat,” one of her captors said, and a coarse canvas bag was slid over her face. It smelled wrong, gross, and Penny tried to take it off for a moment before her arms were yanked away from her face.

“Can’t be having that,” another gruff voice said, and Penny cried out as her arms were twisted painfully behind her. “Take some deep breaths, you fucking twerp, and go the fuck to sleep.”

Her spider-sense was screaming at her and Penny tried to dig her heels in, but it was no use. She had to breathe, and she hadn’t gotten a chance to put her mask on before she was grabbed. The world went fuzzy and the voices around her got increasingly faint.

“Chuck her in the back,” the first voice said, “and then we can get out of here.”

The last thing Penny was aware of was being tossed over someone’s shoulder. She took one more breath and passed out.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Penny finds out who took her.

Pepper came to her senses after a few minutes, her head still reeling from the crash. With some effort, she saw Rhodey coming to as well, and she looked into the back seat, where Penny –

Where Penny should have been.

Instead, there was an empty seat and signs of a struggle.

Pepper struggled out of her seatbelt and started trying to push open the door, but it was crumpled in. She reached for her phone and dialed Sam’s number. She would call the PR people back later.

“Pepper?” Sam asked, confusion in his tone. “What’s up?”

“We were attacked on the road,” Pepper said, and she shook Rhodey. He blinked awake and realized he was in the same position as Pepper. “It was a coordinated hit. Penny was taken – the crash knocked Rhodey and I out, scrambled our brains a little. I don’t think either of us need medical attention right now, but we – we need to find Penny, Sam, she was _taken_ and I don’t know where she is.”

“Fuck,” Sam said, and Pepper could hear something in the background. “Alright, I’ll assemble the team and meet you where you are. You call an ambulance next, okay? Get you and Rhodey checked out.”

Pepper sighed before seeing one of the suits she’d summoned touch down near them. “Alright,” she said, and then remembered what they were doing before they got attacked. “Shit, we were on the way home to pick up Morgan. She’s still at daycare.”

“Then see if someone can pick her up and go home to her,” Sam said. “Is there any evidence in the area where the attackers took Penny? Any notes, tire tracks, stuff like that?”

“No,” Pepper said, and got a suit to grab the car door and pull it off its hinges. On the other side of the car, Rhodey’s suit did the same for him. “They attacked from the air. I didn’t even get a good look at what was chasing us.”

“I did,” Rhodey said, getting out of the car. “It was an H225 helicopter. Decked out for military use, serious firepower attached. Whoever came for us knew where we were going, when we would be vulnerable and had some serious funding they used to get to us.”

They heard Sam groaning through the speaker. “Did the kid have powerful enough enemies who could have done this?” he asked. “I thought she mostly stayed to helping little old ladies cross the road and shit like that.”

“She took down Beck and that started this whole thing,” Pepper said. “This might be a play by them, by the Vulture’s people or by someone else we haven’t really considered yet. For all we know, this might be a play at us – grabbing our youngest and newest while she was vulnerable.”

“I think that’s a little less likely,” Sam said, “or they would have likely grabbed all three of you. Both of you are highly-visible people.”

There were sirens in the distance coming closer to them, and Pepper massaged her temple for what felt like the hundredth time that day. “Sam, listen, the authorities are almost here. I’m going to hang up for now, but when we’re done talking to them I’m going to fly back to the lake house and Jim is going to fly back to town to help you out, okay? We’re gonna find her.”

“We’re gonna find her,” Sam repeated back, and Pepper hung up without another word.

“Fuck, Jim,” Pepper said, turning to her friend with a heavy heart. “She’s not even 17 yet. She doesn’t deserve all this.”

Rhodey opened his arms and held her close, rubbing the back the way he’d done often since Tony died. “I know, Pep. She’s strong, though. If any 16-year-old can get through this, it’s her.”

Initial attempts to locate Penny through technology were unsuccessful. Her phone and her suit were both offline, so they couldn’t track it, and Morgan was restless and agitated when Pepper and Rhodey came to pick her up without Penny also being there.

Meanwhile, Penny was mostly out of it. Whatever was in the bag was effective, and even when it was removed she felt the effects for hours after, woozy and nauseous and content to just sleep it off as best she could. Penny knew she should have been fighting it, but she didn’t have much of a choice until later, almost half a day later, when she woke up on a bare cot in a windowless room.

Her head was pounding and her mouth felt like the Sahara. Penny was still in the clothing she’d been wearing on the ride home and she could smell the dried blood on it, as well as the chemical scent of panic her body released during the crash. Penny wrinkled her nose and moved on to feeling –

Well, she would have felt her head, to see if she had a wound there, but her hands were shackled, as were her feet. Her thoughts were crawling, but through the headache she remembered the crash, remembered the kidnapping.

Fuck, this was one of the reasons she had a secret identity to begin with. She wasn’t like the Fantastic Four, where the entire family was in on the business, or like Dr. Strange, who didn’t have any family that could be used against him by a villain with a grudge. Penny had people who she loved, people who were normal, and Penny hadn’t even been safe in a car with two other heroes.

The door swung open, heavy and foreboding, and a chill ran up Penny’s spine as her captors came into the room. There were three men who were clearly muscle and one man, shorter and chubbier, who was quite clearly the leader.

“Penny, Penny, Penny,” the leader said, smiling at her sadistically, “glad to see you’re awake.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Penny asked, her temper made even shorter by the headache, but there if there was a way to react to being kidnapped, Penny hadn’t been informed. This was her first time, after all, and she wasn’t feeling charitable.

“I’m Karl Graft,” he said, his smile never leaving his face. “You may remember the previous leader of our organization, Adrian Toomes? You put him in jail before the Snap and he’s still there.”

Something deep and awful caused Penny’s stomach to twist inside of her, and her couldn’t hide the brief look of horror that flitted across her face. “I remember him,” she said, frowning. “Left him on a burning beach with all the cargo he couldn’t steal scattered around him. You want a piece of that action?”

Karl laughed and the sound scared her. “You’ve definitely got some nerve there, kid, but you’re not exactly striking fear into my heart here,” he said. “Check your situation and try again. I’ve got all the power here. Gustav, how about you remind her?”

That was all the warning Penny had before one of the guards pushed her back against the wall, her headache spiking as her head made sharp, quick contact with the cinderblock bricks of her cell.

“Thank you, Gustav,” Karl said, and Gustav stepped back into the circle around him.

“You’re going to stay here, in this cell, and you’re going to be a good little hostage,” Karl continued. “You’re going to cry when I bring a camera in, and you’re going to tell Mommy and Daddy you miss them and you’re going to get me a good little ransom, and then you’re going to go home and tell everyone about your big bad experience and I’ll be somewhere else, using your ransom as seed money to regrow what was destroyed when you took down Toomes. Got it, girly?”

Penny frowned. “There’s one problem with that plan, asshole,” she said, glaring up at him. “I’m an orphan. My aunt is a nurse at a hospital. We’ve never been crawling in money, and she overdrafted the account two months ago ordering pizza before I went to Europe.”

“And yet under that Walmart and thrift-shop outfit you’ve got a $3 million super-suit that was customized for your body and your powers, and it’s not even the only suit you’ve worn,” Karl said. “You have better connections than just a nurse aunt who can’t budget for shit. Don’t play dumb, Penny. It’s not pretty on a girl like you.”

He gestured and he left the cell with his goon squad, ignoring the way Penny’s gaze could have fried him alive. “Get the girl some food,” he said to someone Penny couldn’t see, “but give her a few hours to cool down first. We don’t want her throwing it at the wall like some kind of animal, do we?”

Penny wanted to scream so, so bad, but her head was pounding and she couldn’t bring herself to make it even worse. Instead of a scream she released a sob and buried her head into the thin pillow on the thin, uncomfortable cot.

Nothing about this was okay.

The headache went on for hours, even past when the meal was delivered. It was a thin slice of cardboard-esque pizza and it was already cold, but even though it had been more than 16 hours since the last time she’d eaten Penny couldn’t bring herself to get off the bed and get it. Every little motion hurt and the smell of badly-balanced sauce set her stomach turning.

The water, though – Penny drank as much of it as she could. It was weird and smelled like sulfur, which said to her that they were out in the middle of nowhere. It made sense. The guards used short-wave radio to communicate with each other, and her smartwatch couldn’t get a signal.

What was really frustrating was the entire time, Penny was trying to think of what Mr. Stark would have done and she just couldn’t come up with anything. A part of her remembered that Mr. Stark was kidnapped too, and that he was missing for months before he was able to build tech and get himself to help, but Penny didn’t think she’d have that sort of time or opportunity. As it was, she didn’t even have the ability to tear open her watch and start fiddling with the electronics in it to create a signal or even a fire.

What she did have was plenty of unsupervised time and a bed against the far wall. Penny’s wrists were smaller than the restraints she was in, and her feet weren’t restrained at all. If she could get enough leverage, she could bust her way out through the cinderblock, but having her hands tied together made it rough.

That was when Karl and the goon squad came back in. One of the henchmen grabbed her chains roughly and pulled her along, off the cot, and they pulled her out of her cell and into some sort of large, open space.

They shoved Penny onto a stool and pointed her attention to a camera. It was a digital camera, but an old one – not something that had been sold since the widespread adoption of wi-fi. Penny frowned and another person, someone she didn’t recognize, got behind the camera and pointed it at Karl. Karl put on a mask with a voice distorter and chills ran down Penny’s spine again.

“Most pennies are worthless, easily lost and thrown away, but this one seems valuable to you,” Karl said, and grabbed Penny suddenly. His finger dug into her cheeks, forcing her head up, tears springing to her eyes. “You have two days to transfer $100 million into the bank account attached to this message before we get tired of this Penny and throw her out too.”

The camera lingered on Penny, and she tried to show a brave face. “Don’t give them what they want, guys! These guys are –”

She was cut off by a swift, vicious slap that knocked her off the chair and to the floor.

“'These guys' mean business,” Karl finished. “Listen to the girl and lose her or listen to me and save her life. The choice is yours.”

Penny was still dazed from the blow when her captors dragged her into standing again. She half-stumbled, half-walked the distance back to her room and then was more or less thrown back onto her cot.

She was going to have to escape. There was no other option. She was going to have to leave and leave soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My father is still in the hospital, for anyone who read the whumpy one-shot I posted earlier in the month. He's been having a roller coaster of a ride but he's doing well enough that they have him doing physical therapy. I don't know why they're doing that, but I have to learn everything about what's going on through my mother.
> 
> I absolutely hate being on the other side of the country during all of this, but I literally can't go home right now because my country is a plague-ridden hellscape and they live in Florida, which is not known for ever doing anything that could be considered 'smart' or 'sane' or reasonable'.

**Author's Note:**

> After Whumptober, I had a lot of people asking me to consider writing more. I really appreciated that, and after writing her for so much during Whumptober I wanted to take Penny in a new direction. In the official movies, Peter is being groomed to lead the future of the Avengers and probably Stark too. There are a lot of great male leaders in the MCU, but very few women in positions of leadership, and I wanted to see how Penny navigates those same expectations.
> 
> As always, please let me know if there's anything you liked or would like to see more of. You can catch me at princessofthewhitemoon.tumblr.com!


End file.
